Café in the Sun
by planet p
Summary: AU; what is the nature of choice? Do we really have choices? How are our choices shaped by what has come before? Can we ever feel safe once we've felt insecure? Can we really hold hope?


**Café in the Sun** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

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The sun shone brightly against the pavement as she sat under the umbrella at the table outside the café's large front window; cars passed on the road mere steps away, separated by a short portable wall advertising the brand of coffee the café served.

The red-haired woman waited, scuffing the front of a shoe on the pavement and humming to a song that was playing from a car across the street; in the mall's parking lot, just audible from where she sat. (Over there, it must have been considered raucously loud, she thought.)

Earlier in the week, she'd been checking out rural properties. She'd scratched her legs on low, scrubby bushes walking along fence lines, tripped up clumps of weedy grasses and sunburned her hands (forgotten that hands needed sunscreen, too).

But she thought she'd found the place.

A safe place.

Now, she waited.

She smiled at the thought she'd just had. It was warm outside, under the sun. She thought that she'd have her hair cut. She'd started to develop split ends and the best way to cure them was to cut them off or get seriously healthy, seriously fast.

The lifestyle she and her family led, of constantly running, constantly worrying, didn't really facilitate 'healthy'.

She thought that she might get a haircut and start eating some more greens: cabbages, leek, silver beet, shallots, endive, broccoli, beans, peas, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, alfalfa, zucchini, cucumber; parsley, sage, dill… She couldn't remember the last time she'd spent more than five minutes in a supermarket, or been to a fresh produce market. The change would be a welcome one, if it ever came.

Across the way, the music was cut short; she had nothing left to hum to. Over the din of traffic, she listened to her shoe scratching against the concrete of the footpath.

_Might have been an idea to bring some reading material_, she thought, though she knew she wouldn't have read it, it would just be a prop; she needed to remain alert. Always alert.

A kid in school uniform sat down at one of the outside tables and turned up her mp3 player, taking out a school textbook on math.

With a jolt, she realised that the song – the song playing on the schoolgirl's mp3 player – was familiar; her mind began to wander, like the hands of a clock, bizarrely winding backwards. The hands halted with a jarring precision and she found herself, once more, in the forest in which she'd once lived.

The trees were so tall; she wasn't tall at all. Just a girl. In the forest, she breathed the air; in the forest, she chopped wood. In the forest, she lived with her family; growing up together.

Sometimes the forest had been warm, at other times cold. At times, the weather had reflected her mood, her thoughts. But, through it all, she'd sometimes smiled, she'd sometimes laughed. She'd felt loved, and had given love in return. She'd loved her family.

She'd been a girl who'd tried to be older than she was, but he'd always seemed to sense that she was still just a girl; he'd always given her that.

But she'd known that that life had been a lie.

Why was it that a lie had been able to make her so happy? she thought, as she forced herself to break from her thoughts. The past. That's all it was. She had a family now who loved her just as much as any family could be expected to, but sometimes she dreamed of that forest and its music, of her child's laughter. When it had all come apart, she'd been only sixteen, moving with rocket speed toward seventeen. She remembered _her_ child, her little girl.

Where was she now? Was she happy, was she well?

The sun burned her eyes so that they filled with water; she readjusted her expression, realising that she'd been frowning: how would she look when her brother arrived, with that face?

She'd scare the poor lad something frightful awful. But it was the questions that got to her the most: she wasn't ready for the questions!

In the warmth of the sun, she found she'd been taken with a sudden chill. She tried to remember what it felt like to be held in friendly arms, but she remembered tears. Tears and threats. This is your last chance, no more chances after this one: don't come here again!

She felt tears wet her face, pressing warmly against her skin, and wrapped her arms about herself. She should have been fine, she thought, she shouldn't have been sitting here _crying_! He hadn't come to her, she remembered, he'd never come to her. Not that time: instead, he'd sat down in the hallway, sat down and tried to tell their daughter something that he would have hated to tell any other person, let alone his own child. Sometimes you had to cry, sometimes you had to set down limits, sometimes you had to say the things you said, sometimes you made threats, sometimes you kept them: don't say them – _never_ say them – unless you intend to keep them.

He'd never put his arms around her, but what had scared her the most was how he'd said all this: there'd been nothing in his voice then.

Her brother's voice was like that these days: scary empty.

And there was _nothing_ she could say!

_If this place is good, it should get better_, she fought to convince herself. She brushed away her tears; took out some tissues from her shoulder bag and blew her nose; tried to look cheery, sunny.

Her brother wasn't what he was: her brother could _keep_ his promises – and his threats.

She left the table and went inside to order a coffee; she barely heard the chair scrape the pavement as she pushed her seat back to stand, or the conversations which she intersected with as she passed tables and chatting patrons. The counter was cool as she gripped it; she dug her hands into her pockets. In the end, he'd kept his promise: in the end, one way or another, that damn promise had been fulfilled!

Kyle had died.

And a large part of Jarod had died with him. It was not a part he showed to the world, but it was a part she knew existed. The part which had felt a strange, unwanted connection to the place and the people who'd taken him from his real family as a child, and had come to replace them in time, in however sick, twisted way: and, finally, with Kyle's death, had been shattered beyond repair. A _real_ family would not have taken away someone he cared about!

Suddenly, he'd stopped to think: they'd never been 'family'; they'd been sick, demented posers. And he was as sick as they were for believing it, for, finally, allowing himself to buy it: for something – just _some_thing – to believe!

The Center wasn't a family: they were a business unit! They functioned to generate profit, to widen the gaps in society, the gaps between human beings. They were about power: power held and power lost; power gained and powerlessness. Family was a bloody insult to everything the stood for, everything they'd worked for, and a pretence they had to suffer.

Underneath, underneath the lies and Pretends, the _real_ Jarod – her real brother – had grown cold and hard. The cold made things hard; things that were cold broke, died, could no longer function.

Jarod wasn't empty: he was _cold_!

And only he could find warmth again, only he could let it in; as hard as it shined, as hard as it pleaded, begged, beseeched; it would all be for naught, it would all come to naught, if he choose it to.

Except, she wasn't sure that he _could_ choose anything else. She wasn't sure there was anything else, anymore. Sometimes, the choices stop; they die, too. Sometimes, they stop coming (even when they're right there; for anyone else, they'd be right there).

_We'll live, we'll be a family again_, she thought as she wiped fresh tears from her eyes before they could fall.

She didn't promise. Even promises made with the best intentions could change, could be twisted so many times in so many directions that they became something dark and deadly: something terrible.

Though he was cold, Jarod missed his 'old' family; missed them but had to hate them. Maybe, he'd hated them all along. But hate was a funny thing, the way it worked: some people could hate one thing, but love another; but some people both hated and loved the same thing.

Jarod didn't want to hate Sydney (he loved Sydney), but the rules dictated no margin for exception, no margin for error. After Kyle, that was the way the rules had changed. They'd _had_ to change.

He hated that Kyle had died, but not just for the life that he been lost (the life that Kyle had been deprived, not just for the brother that he had lost (that he'd just barely began to care for).

And she, arguably, she felt the same way, too.

She wished she could be that girl again, she wished she could be back in that forest, but it could never again be as it was. Not ever.

The sound of an unwanted name (though not an ill-chosen one) drew her from her thoughts; she smiled: there was her brother, there was the sun on his face, warming his cheeks; there was the smile which was both real (for you, sister) and unreal (people lie, people hurt: people _can_ be bad – lots of them _are_).

She was back at the table. She'd ordered two coffees; two coffees sat cooling on the table. She'd stopped scuffing her shoe; she didn't mention the scratches. Jarod took a seat; she took out the documents she'd collated. Looking at her brother, she thought, _Please_, and handed the papers across to him: your move.

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**Likely, the summary was as bad ****as this was. Thanks for reading.**


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